From:	kunst AT prl DOT philips DOT nl
Subject:	Re: Graphics drivers
To:	A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk (A.Appleyard)
Date:	Wed, 1 Mar 1995 14:34:45 +0100 (MET)
Cc:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu (DJGPP users list)

> 
>   I recently downloaded a graphics program that had been written in Gnu C. So
> that it could work, it had to carry about with it a load of graphics drivers
> for different graphics chips, and I had to set it up for my graphics chip
> instead of being able to use the software at once. Someone with a PC may not
> always know what sort of graphics chip his PC has in, and in any case having
> to edit the name of the chip into his AUTOEXEC.BAT is one more thing to do. As
> it is, my PC's graphics chip (a Cirrus) is not in DJGPP\DRIVERS\, but luckily
> I dug its driver up in a remote subdirectory corner of DJGPP\CONTRIB\.
>   The only purpose of these graphics drivers seems to be to map the nine GO32
> screen modes (0 = 80*25 text, 1 = default text, 2 = CX*DX text, 3 = biggest
> text, 4 = 320*200 graphics, 5 = default graphics, 6 = CX*DX graphics, 7 =
> biggest non-interlaced graphics, 8 = biggest graphics) onto his PC's graphics
> chip's own screen modes (AH=0xff, AL=z, int10: go to GO32 screen mode z).
>   But there are ways that a program can for(n=0;n<255;n++) find what mode n is
> and what its details are, e.g. the SuperVGA interrupt `AX=0xf401, CX=n,
> ES:DI=array, int 10' writes into the array a lot of info re screen mode n.
>   In view of this, please can't Gnu C have one graphics driver only, that uses
> these find-screen-mode-info interrupts to find the graphics chip's modes? Thus
> all the miscellaneous horde of graphics drivers that clutters up djgpp could
> be pensioned off. For example Windows Setup can cope easily with different
> graphics chips without me having to tell it what graphics chip I have.
> 


Anthony, your problem has been solved already!
The default GO32 graphics driver is VESA.
VESA is supported by all new graphics boards.
Older boards (>3y) can use the shareware program UNIVBE (from Simtel).

You need just one (or two, if you have an old graphics card) lines:

  UNIVBE               <---- optional
  SET GO32=nc 256


Pieter Kunst (kunst AT prl DOT philips DOT nl)

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